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You're doing all the right things helping your child avoid tooth decay: daily brushing and flossing, regular dental visits and a low-sugar diet. But although occurrences are low, they're still getting cavities.

Some children still struggle with tooth decay even with proper dental care. If this is happening to your child, your dentist may be able to give them an extra preventive boost through topical fluoride.

Fluoride has long been recognized as a proven cavity fighter. Often added in small amounts to toothpastes and drinking water, fluoride strengthens tooth enamel against acid attacks that create cavities. With topical fluoride, a dentist applies a varnish, foam or gel containing a more concentrated amount of the chemical directly to the teeth.

The effectiveness of this method in reducing tooth decay is well-founded: A number of scientific studies involving thousands of children and adolescents found an average 28% reduction in occurrences of decay among those who received the treatment compared to those who didn't.

Still, many parents have concerns about the higher fluoride concentrations in topical applications. But even at this greater amount, fluoride doesn't appear to pose any long-term health risks. The most adverse effects—vomiting, headaches or stomach pain—usually occur if a child accidentally ingests too much of the solution during treatment.

Dentists, however, go to great lengths to prevent this by using guards to isolate the solution during an application. And in the case of a foam or gel application, parents can further lower the risk of these unpleasant side effects by not allowing their child to eat or drink for at least thirty minutes after the procedure.

The evidence seems to indicate that the benefits of regular topical fluoride applications for children at high risk outweigh the possible side effects. By adding this measure to your prevention strategy, you can further protect your child from this danger to their current and future dental health.

Although periodontal (gum) disease starts with the gums, the teeth may ultimately suffer. An infection can damage the gum attachment and supporting bone to the point that an affected tooth could be lost.

The main cause for gum disease is dental plaque, a bacterial biofilm that accumulates on teeth due to ineffective oral hygiene. But there can be other contributing factors that make you more susceptible to an infection. Smoking tobacco is one of the most harmful as more than half of smokers develop gum disease at some point in their life. If you’re a heavy smoker, you have double the risk of gum disease than a non-smoker.

There are several reasons why smoking increases the risk of gum disease. For one, smoking reduces the body’s production of antibodies. This diminishes the body’s ability to fight oral infections and aid healing. As a smoker, your body can’t respond adequately enough to the rapid spread of a gum infection.

Another reason for the increased risk with smoking are the chemicals in tobacco that damage the connectivity of gum tissues to teeth that keep them anchored in place. The heavier the smoking habit, the worse this particular damage is to the gums. This can accelerate the disease and make it more likely you’ll lose affected teeth.

Smoking can also interfere with getting a prompt diagnosis of gum disease because the nicotine in tobacco reduces the blood supply to the gums. Usually a person with an infection may first notice their gums are reddened or swollen, and bleed easily. Smoking, however, can give a false impression of health because it prevents the infected gum tissues from becoming swollen and are less likely to bleed. As a result, you may learn you have the disease much later rather than sooner, allowing the infection to inflict more damage.

There are ways to reduce your disease risk if you smoke. The top way: Kick the smoking habit. With time, the effects of smoking on your mouth and body will diminish, and you’ll be better able to fight infection.

You should also practice daily brushing and flossing to keep plaque at bay, followed by regular dental cleanings to remove hard to reach plaque and calculus (tartar) deposits. You should also see your dentist at the first sign of trouble with your gums.

A disease happening in one part of your body doesn’t necessarily stay there. Even a localized infection could eventually affect your general health. Periodontal (gum) disease, a bacterial infection that damages gums, teeth and supporting bone, is a case in point.

There’s now growing evidence that gum disease shares links with some other serious systemic diseases. Here are 4 serious health conditions and how gum disease could affect them.

Diabetes. Gum disease could make managing diabetes more difficult—and vice-versa. Chronic inflammation occurs in both conditions, which can then aggravate the other. Diabetics must deal with higher than normal glucose levels, which can also feed oral bacteria and worsen existing gum disease. On the plus side, though, effectively managing both conditions can lessen each one’s health impact.

Heart disease. Gum disease can worsen an existing heart condition and increase the risk of stroke. Researchers have found evidence that chronic inflammation from gum disease could further damage already weakened blood vessels and increase blood clot risks. Treating gum disease aggressively, on the other hand, could lower blood pressure as much as 13 points.

Rheumatoid Arthritis. The increased inflammatory response that accompanies arthritis (and other diseases like lupus or inflammatory bowel disease) can contribute to a higher risk for gum disease. As with the other conditions previously mentioned, chronic inflammation from a gum infection can also aggravate arthritis symptoms. Treating any form of chronic inflammation can ease symptoms in both arthritis and gum disease.

Alzheimer’s disease. The links of Alzheimer’s disease to gum disease are in the numbers: a recent study found people over 70 who’ve had gum disease for ten or more years were 70% more likely to develop dementia than those with healthy gums. There is also evidence that individuals with both Alzheimer’s and gum disease tended to decline more rapidly than those without gum disease.

From the accumulating evidence, researchers now view gum disease as more than an oral problem—it could impact your total health. That’s why you should adopt a disease prevention strategy with daily brushing and flossing and regular dental visits (or whenever you notice puffy, reddened or bleeding gums). Stopping gum disease could provide you a health benefit well beyond preserving your teeth and gums.

While the imagination is one of our most powerful mental abilities, many people still find it difficult to “see” in their minds a future dramatically different from the present. That could be the case with a “smile makeover”—it’s not easy to imagine how proposed changes to your teeth and gums can affect your entire look.

Computer imaging software has helped in this regard. Starting with a photo of your current smile, we can manipulate it with imaging software to show you what any proposed dental work might look like after completion. But imaging technology has its limits: you’re viewing a static, two-dimensional image that can’t really show you how your new smile looks as your mouth and face move in a three-dimensional space.

There is another way, and although it may add to your treatment costs it can give you an even more realistic view of your future appearance. Known simply as a “trial smile,” it’s a procedure in which we temporarily place life-like bonding material called composite resin on your current teeth. We shape, cure and sculpt the resin to produce a three-dimensional model of what your future smile will look like.

A trial smile gives you a chance to experience in real time how this future smile looks and feels as you smile or talk. And although we’ll have to remove it before you leave, we can photograph your new look for you to show to family and friends later for their reaction.

There are a couple of important reasons to have a trial smile. First, it gives us both a chance to review how the proposed changes may enhance your appearance, and whether we need to alter those plans in any way. It’s a kind of dress rehearsal where we can improve the “script” before the actual performance.

Just as important, a trial smile can help reassure you about what to expect from the outcome. You’ll have a fairly accurate idea of how you’ll look, which will help reduce any apprehensions you might have.

If you’d like to include a trial smile in your treatment plan, please feel free to discuss it with us. It can be money well spent to ensure you’ll be satisfied and delighted with your new smile.

Your child's permanent teeth come in gradually, starting just as they begin losing their primary ("baby") teeth and not ending until late adolescence or early adulthood. That's when the third molars or "wisdom teeth" close out the process.

Because of their late arrival, wisdom teeth have a high potential for dental problems. With a greater chance of crowding or obstruction by other teeth, wisdom teeth often get stuck fully or partially below the gums and bone (impaction) or erupt out of position. In one study, 7 in 10 people between the ages of 20 and 30 will have at least one impacted wisdom tooth at some time in their lives.

It's not surprising then that wisdom teeth are among the most extracted teeth, to the tune of about 10 million per year. Besides those already diseased or causing bite problems, many are removed preemptively in an attempt to avoid future problems.

But wisdom teeth usually require surgical extraction by an oral surgeon, which is much more involved than a simple extraction by a general dentist. Given the potential consequences of surgical extraction, is it really necessary to remove a wisdom tooth not creating immediate problems?

That's not an easy question to answer because it's often difficult to predict a wisdom tooth's developmental track. Early on it can be disease-free and not causing any problems to other teeth. But as some researchers have found, one in three wisdom teeth at this stage will later develop disease or create other issues.

For many dentists, the best approach is to consider extraction on a case by case basis. Those displaying definite signs of problems are prime for removal. But where there are no signs of disease or other issues, the more prudent action may be to keep a watchful eye on their development and decide on extraction at some later date.

More than likely, your dentist will continue to have an ongoing discussion with you about the state of your child's wisdom teeth. While extraction is always an option, wisdom teeth that aren't yet a problem to dental health may be best left alone.

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